Years ago, I was hanging in front of a Costa Mesa Japanese supermarket waiting for my wife and fell into conversation with a woman handing out flyers for a New Year’s festival. Turns out she was from Kashima but hadn’t returned in decades and was amazed at my stories of its development, with the Aeon mall and housing and all - she left it as rice paddy and couldn’t imagine it as anything else.
That looks the fate of the Kosa-Yabe interchange. A bit more detailed info on Costco’s plans: They’ve purchased six hectares on the impossibly multisyllable Koiketakayama (小池高山 - for a country that is so good at abbreviating words, such as remokon, couldn’t they have done so here?!) Interchange and plan to open their first Kyushu outlet outside of Fukuoka in 2021, just in time to catch Olympic spectators who had gotten horribly lost. - William